Objectives
Literacy and identity development is at the center of this unit. The planned activities are designed to promote students to evaluate the ethnic identity of young Latino immigrants and their own while they read and respond to culturally authentic literature, curricular texts related to immigration in the United States, and other media. This will facilitate a deeper understanding of the social studies topics. It is important to me to integrate a language arts and social studies curriculum that is inclusive of their cultural, linguistic and historical background. The following describes the essential learning goals and the core elements/themes of the unit plan.
Literacy
I want students to recreate their understanding of self, the literary world and the global society. To achieve this, I will model literary connections for my students and prompt them to make connections during reading activities. To make a connection to the reading, a student must think about what they have read, and consider how it applies to their personal experience (text-to-self), another book or something they have read (text-to-text), or any information that relates to the world (text-to-world). As the school year progresses we collectively join texts to our personal experiences, to other texts, and to the world. Once they are confident in this approach to literature, the students are able to articulate their connections independently. By becoming better able to critically analyze information, they can continue to broaden their perspectives and understanding in the hope that they might persist in an academic setting like high school and college.
Culturally Authentic Literature
I want students to read culturally authentic literature in order to prompt them to think about their own lives. The literature will serve as a tool for examining narrative writing, and for reflecting on their personal experiences and who they are as young Latino immigrants or the children of immigrants. In "Living to Tell the Story: The Authentic Latino Immigrant Experience in Picture Books," René Colato Laínez elaborates on how Latino authors can effectively provide authentic models of the acculturation process for immigrant children. She writes that Latino authors use their experiences of being uprooted from their country of origin, being transplanted to the United States and their adaptation to a new culture in order to authentically and realistically portray the immigrant experience. She also encourages authors to write an acculturation story, a story where the protagonist becomes part of the mainstream culture without discarding their language and culture. "These Latino authors validate the children's identity - their names, language, roots and culture." (4) I want to include excellent representations of the acculturation process by selecting authentic literature that demonstrates the complexities of growing-up Latino and being bicultural. Naturally, this will enable my students to make meaningful connections, and support the formation of a strong, healthy ethnic and bicultural identity in Latino immigrant students.
In researching for this unit, I easily found several anthologies of bilingual literature focused on the Latino experience of young adults through college-aged students, and address significant issues that affect Latinos. Many of these anthologies represent a larger presence Latinos have in contemporary young adult literature. Some of the more recently published anthologies are included in the Resources lists.
Ethnic Identity, Bicultural Identity, and Acculturation
I want my students to reflect on their cultural and ethnic identities. I want to present several opportunities to view and reflect on literature, music and other audio/visual media. Within these varied learning experiences, they will be exposed to others' experiences and ideas. Students will identify their own cultural/ethnic heritage and consider how Latino communities have adapted to the larger society. They may answer questions such as, "What traditions, values and belief systems have Latinos carried over (maintained) to daily life in the United States?" "How was this achieved?" "Consider yourself and your family, what have you kept and what has changed in your family since emigrating from Mexico or Central America?"
In my research, I found how defining one's ethnic identity can be effective in teaching young immigrant Latinos and equipping them to interact positively with the larger society. In Diversity Pedagogy: Examining the Role of Culture in the Teaching Learning Process, Rosa Hernández Sheets' upholds the relationship between culture and cognition as central to the teaching-learning process. She illustrates this by defining the ways teachers' and students' behavior influences the co-construction of knowledge. (5) One of the dimensional elements of "Diversity Pedagogy" is identity, how students define who they are and the group to which they belong. Through a distinctive ethnic socialization process, children form and develop an ethnic identity. During the middle childhood years, children have the ability to understand how their ethnic identity plays a role in their lives. Children at this age begin to internalize societal attitudes regarding their ethnic group and to form their own identity by what they learn from school experiences, their peers and the media. The impact ethnic identity can have on student learning is significant. Five outcomes of this personal and group dimension of self are: 1) promotes cognitive strengths and social competencies valued at home and in their community; 2) shapes how they view themselves ethnically; 3) affects how they respond to their ethnic group; 4) directs how students interact with others; and 5) influences access to academic and social opportunities. (6) Furthermore, if children adopt a bicultural identity, children develop competence to function in both cultures. Immigrant children acculturate and become part of the mainstream culture without discarding past meaningful traditions and values. (7)
College-Going Identity
I want to provide opportunities for my students to view how it is possible for immigrant Latinos to attend college. According to UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center's 2006 report, "Falling through the Cracks: Critical Transitions in the Latina/o Educational Pipeline" one of the recommended steps for improving the educational outlook for Latinos is to provide opportunities to develop a multicultural, college-going identity. Specifically, students should be encouraged to view the college-going experience as central to their academic identity.(8) After reading this report, I considered how I could better assist my students to form an academic identity that includes going to college. I found literature (fiction and nonfiction) that places Latinos in the context of a university or college. I think it is very important that I keep this in the forefront of my thinking as I develop units of study in the future as well.
School-Home Connection
I want my students to connect their school experiences with their home lives in new and meaningful ways. I want to include opportunities to connect Latino homes and public schools. Even though the language used and cultural norms may be distinctly different in traditional classrooms, the use of culturally authentic literature and the incorporation of activities can bridge home and school settings in new and meaningful ways. In Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodríguez (Aria, I) Rodríguez describes how he learned to separate his cultural and language identity from what was public (in school and in the community) and what was private (home, personal). He seems to long for more continuity between his school and home environments but believes that his private and public languages and culture/heritage should not overlap (cultural discontinuity) (9). The importance for immigrant students to have their cultural identities present in both home and school settings is clear. In order to adequately foster the formation of their cognitive and personal identities, students must recognize that an equal value is placed on each cultural setting.
A Sense of Place for the Latino Immigrant
I want to show students that identities are complicated, and that there are many people in American society who believe that they straddle the line between the United States and Mexico. In an effort to learn more about how I could frame my thinking about the mixed identity of a Latino immigrant, I read A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki. He refers to what Gloria Anzaldúa celebrated as a "borderland" - a place where "two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory. . . Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, Mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian - our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same people."(10) Even though my school is not as diverse as many urban, public schools in the United States, I want to empower my students to value what sets them apart from others and to embrace the common experiences, identities and values they have with others at school. How can this be applied to my teaching? As I read further, I connect my practice to what Takaki writes "to become visible is to see ourselves and each other in a different mirror of history. . .. By viewing ourselves in a mirror which reflects reality, we can see our past as undistorted... Our denied history 'bursts with telling."(11) I would like to cultivate my students' sense of identity rooted in the immigrant Latino experience. Through the learning activities in this unit, students will compare their personal history with that of others, and identify the importance they, as a minority community, hold relative to our nation's history. I would like to harvest their bilingual voices of strength, courage and hope as they reflect on who they are, from where they came, and write the oral histories and memoirs that anchor their sense of place and pride.
Mexican Immigration to the United States
I want my students to understand some basic facts about Mexican immigration to the United States. I also want my students to consider questions specific to Santa Fe like "Why did people come here?" "How do our experiences here compare to others elsewhere?" In addition, I want students to reflect on why people emigrate from the place that holds their ancestral chants, cultural rhythms, and the birthplace of their ideas and identities? My own understanding of this subject has been enriched by reading Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail, Rubén Martínez's compelling account of a Mexican family that crosses la frontera. The prologue is entitled The Passion. This title is indicative of how the book immediately illuminates the humanity and deep passion in the migration of a family crossing over to another language, culture and way of being. Martínez eloquently describes why Mexicans have migrated to this country. It is in this combination of prose and relevant information on the place, history and significance of the immigration of millions to the United States that propels me forward to find supplemental texts, oral histories, visual references and timelines to strengthen my understanding of this topic. I would like my students to consider how our present government decides what is best for our country in regards to Immigration Reform - what decisions are based on economic and political gain? Or which alternatives are based on equality, justice, and respect for humanity? How do these decisions affect Latino immigrants? How do they affect the future for you and your family?
Comments: